The iPod is, essentially, a hard drive and a digital music player in one device. That device is such a thing of beauty and style and so highly recognizable by now that all Apple needs to do in an advertisement is show it all by itself. Even the 60GB iPod weighs less than two CDs in standard jewel cases, and iPod mini is smaller than a cell phone and weighs just 3.6 ounces.
The convenience of carrying music on an iPod is phenomenal. For example, the 60GB iPod model can hold around 15,000 songs. That's about a month of nonstop music played around the clock - or about one new song a day for the next 40 years. And with the iPod's built-in skip protection in every model, you don't miss a beat as you jog through the park or your car hits a pothole.
Although Apple has every right to continue to promote its Macintosh computers, the company saw the wisdom of making the iPod compatible with Windows PCs. Every iPod now comes with the software that you need to make it work with Windows systems as well as Macintosh OS X.
A common misconception is that your iPod becomes your music library. Actually, your iPod is simply another player for your music library, which is safely stored on your computer. One considerable benefit of digital music technology is that you can use your computer to serve up your music library and make perfect-quality copies.
Copy as much of it as you want onto your iPod, and take it on the road. Two decades from now those digital songs will be the same in quality - the music won't be trapped on a cassette or CD that can degrade over time (CDs can stop working after 15-20 years). The wonderfully remixed, remastered, reconstituted version of your favorite album can be copied over and over forever, just like the rest of your information, and it never loses its sound fidelity. If you save your music in digital format, you will never lose a song and have to buy it again.
The iPod experience includes iTunes (or, in older-generation models, Musicmatch Jukebox), which lets you organize your music in digital form, make copies, burn CDs, and play disc jockey without discs. Suddenly your music world includes online music stores and free music downloads. Without iTunes (or Musicmatch Jukebox), your iPod is merely an external hard drive. As a result of using iTunes (or Musicmatch Jukebox), your music library is more permanent than it ever was before because you can make backup copies that are absolutely the same in quality.
You'll spend only about ten seconds copying an entire CD's worth of music from iTunes on your computer to your iPod. Any iPod can play any song in the most popular digital audio formats, including MP3, AIFF, WAV, and Apple's AAC format, which features CD-quality audio in smaller file sizes than MP3. The iPod also supports the Audible AA spoken word file format.
The iPod is also a data player, perhaps the first of its kind. As an external hard drive, the iPod serves as a portable backup device for important data files. You can transfer your calendar and address book to help manage your affairs on the road, and you can even use calendar event alarms to supplement your iPod's alarm and sleep timer. Although the iPod isn't as fully functional as a personal digital assistance (PDA) - for example, you can't add information directly to the device - you can view the information. You can keep your calendar and address book automatically synchronized to your computer, where you normally add and edit information.
http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/putting-your-ipod-to-work-for-you/153230;_ylt=AtK6.dX8DSSxQ43gAyAOv8oSLpA5
